


366 Days Without Magic

by goblindaughter



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-04 22:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1795501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblindaughter/pseuds/goblindaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chelsea adjusts to life in the knowe. And makes friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	366 Days Without Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/gifts).



Chelsea’s worried, when she goes under the hill, that she’s going to be lonely. 

Quentin and Raj and Helen knock that idea out of her pretty fast.

***

"Sorry about before," she tells Raj the first time they have lunch together, meaning _sorry about accidentally trapping you in an ancient sealed-off pocket universe_. (At least faeries apologize. She still has to stop herself from saying "thank you".)

He shrugs. "It's okay."

“Really?”

“Well, the person I actually blame is stuck there forever. So yeah. Can you pass the fries?”

***

Monday nights are movie nights. (It’s not actually hard to tell which ones are Monday nights, because Chelsea marks off every day on her calendar before going to bed. Time in the knowe runs at a one second per second ratio to her world. Also, Quentin lives with Toby, so if anyone forgets he can just tell them.) The four of them cram in front of the knowe’s only flat-screen TV and, because even though they’re supposed to decide beforehand they never do, bicker over which movie to watch. Or actually, Chelsea and Helen (whose father has something of an obsession with American films) bicker over which movie to watch, with Raj occasionally throwing in on Helen’s side on principal. 

“I say we watch the Evil Dead sequel,” says Helen.

“We can’t just show them the second part in a series!” Chelsea says, because you really, really can’t. “And I so do not want to watch the first one again.”

“Okay, okay, how about The Blues Brothers?"

"I don't know, I'm not feeling it. Maybe something Star Trek?"

"You always want something Star Trek." 

"It's not my fault it's the best thing ever! Besides, they haven't seen the one with the whales." 

Helen pauses. "You know," she says, very seriously, "You have a point." 

"How is there a Star Trek movie with whales?" asks Quentin. 

They watch the one with the whales.

***

Sometimes she looks at herself in the mirror and runs her fingers over her cheekbones, over the long, thin tips of her ears, stares at the copper sheen of her eyes. The same but different. That's her face. Like the difference between concept art and the final product. She presses her thumbs against the veins on her wrists and against the arteries in her neck to feel the blood pumping. Her pulse doesn't feel like it’s changed (although actually it has--she checked, and her resting heart rate is three beats slower). 

What will her magic feel like, when it comes back?

***

For Raj's birthday they all slap on human disguises (having Quentin do it for her really itches, but she has to let him and it's not for very long, anyway) and drive to Toby’s house. Tybalt is there and a couple of Helen’s friends, and some kids who Toby knows. Chelsea ends up sticking to the wall. She’s never really been great at parties, and everyone here knew everybody else first. 

"Hey," Quentin says, handing her a cup of orange soda. "Are you not having fun?" 

"No," Chelsea says. "I'm just not really a party person, I guess." She shrugs.

"Well, do you want to try it for a little?" 

"Try what?"

"Being a party person." She almost snorts soda out her nose when she snickers. Quentin grins. "Come on, Helen and Raj are setting up a board game."

"Tell me it's not Monopoly. That game destroys friendships."

"No, it's something called Apples to Apples."

Well, she does like Apples to Apples. "Yeah, okay," Chelsea says. "I'll test-drive being a party person."

Raj ends up winning. 

***

She's not really sure what to do about Father's Day.

Before, she just kind of got through it. She made construction-paper cards in class because it was easier than explaining that she didn't have a dad, and then when she got too old for that she just didn't talk about it, and everything has been so completely weird that she just hasn't thought about the fact that oh, hey, she actually has a reason to celebrate it now. A reason who looks like her. 

After a quick brainstorming session, she decides to skip the card and go for a present. The only problem is, she’s not sure what to get him. He’s not a tie kind of person, she’s never seen him reading a book that her mom didn’t buy him, he already has a sword and like eight knives...

Eventually she just asks the hobs. Who, thank god, are more than happy to help and know exactly what to get him even if they don't understand what the point is. They help her--or, actually, she helps them, since she's not that great with leather--repair the straps on an old set of ceremonial armor. "He keeps forgetting," is what Nelly helpfully told her. "It broke back when things were bad and he's had so much to do that he never gets around to it." (When they say when things were bad they really mean when Lady Luna and the Torquills's missing daughter were kidnapped by his evil brother.)

She shows her father, and for a long moment he stares at it. “Do you like it?” she asks tentatively. 

He sweeps her up in a hug, so tight her ribs creak a little bit. “Thank you,” he says, “It’s--it’s very nice.” There’s a hitch to his voice. 

"You're welcome, Dad."

***

For _her_ birthday, the four of them have a sleepover, with cake and popcorn and a semi-legal screening of Maleficent. (Everyone has a wonderful time laughing at all the inaccuracies, especially the part where the pixies are _nice_.) The boys have to sleep in a separate room, at her mom's insistence, even though Helen and Raj are way too polite to fool around and she and Quentin are never ever happening in literally a million years. Chelsea doesn't really push it, though, because this is her first ever sleepover and she's so excited she might actually pop.

So of course she and Helen don't actually get to sleep for hours. There's a brief ridiculous giggle fit when Helen makes a terrible pun--they both laugh until their sides hurt and then Chelsea falls off the bed and they laugh more. 

“Okay, okay, I’m good,” Chelsea says, getting back on and pulling the comforter around her. 

“Yeah, me too.” They lie quietly for a while. Then Helen says, “Hey, Chelsea.”

“Yeah?”

“What was it like, growing up in California?”

“Uh.” Chelsea turns the question over in her mind. “Well, I guess it was more crowded? Lots of kids my age. My mom was really overprotective so I missed out on a lot of the normal human kid stuff. Like, summer camp and sports. I was so mad whenever she didn’t let me do something, because I thought she thought I was stupid. But she had a good reason, I guess.” A really good reason. “What was it like, you know, under the hill?”

“Well, we’re not exactly under the hill. I live in the park--you know, where the Lily Maid used to be in charge?” Helen’s voice catches briefly. “We really miss her. My dad moved there when I made my choice. I didn’t even know what I was doing until we left. He just asked me one day when I was like three: are you like, or like your mother? And I said: I’m like you. And then it was done. Must have been different for you, right?”

Chelsea nods. For a moment, Helen eyes her, waiting for more. When it doesn’t come, she goes on. 

“People are nicer to changelings there. But we’re still changelings, and we all know that. That’s why no one investigated when Blind Michael took me. There’s no standing army, no guards, and not enough people wanted to petition the Queen because they were afraid she’d get angry.” She snorts. “She’s not even good at her job but we can’t get rid of her because of the stupid monarchy. I never said that, by the way.”

“Gotcha,” says Chelsea. “You know, France got rid of their monarchy.”

“France also tried to make citizenship dependent on how many friends you had.”

“That was just someone’s theory, no one ever actually tried to use it.”

“I’m just saying, France is a bad model for running a knowe.” Both of them snicker. “Okay, that’s enough treason for the night.”

“That was _not_ treason!” Chelsea says.

“No, but it’s close enough if Her Majesty doesn’t like you. Lucky for us, we're not interesting enough to dislike." Helen yawns, huge and jaw-cracking. "Oof. Tired." 

"Mmhm," Chelsea agrees. They drift off to sleep. 

Although it takes a while, because as it turns out Helen snores like a buzz saw.

***

Of course she gets her GED. Not that correspondence courses are her favorite thing in the world, but she can’t exactly go to school. It’s not fair to expect Quentin to hold his glamour _and_ her glamour _and_ pay attention in his classes, especially when their schedules would be so different. He can, however, keep her looking human through two rounds of the SAT, one of the ACT, and two SAT subject tests, so she takes those like everyone else. With her scores and the fact she can write one hell of a personal essay, she should be able to go pretty much wherever. 

But where she’s going to go is Berkeley.

“You don’t have to go there,” her mom says. “His lordship is more than happy to pay for your tuition--”

“It’s not the tuition, Mom,” says Chelsea, “It’s the neutral zone thing.”

“Lots of colleges are neutral zones. MIT is--”

“MIT’s academic culture is terrible.” It really is. People can say whatever they like about prestige, but any college where people regularly fail out is doing something wrong.

“Yes, but Princeton is on the other side of the country, and if I get into some kind of trouble, nobody there is going to help me--”

“Your father knows plenty of people, dear.” Bridget eyes her over the top of her glasses, which Chelsea knows is the look that means her mother sees exactly what she's doing. “This isn’t about sovereignty.”

And, fine, yes. She’s right. It’s not. Chelsea really, really likes Princeton, and if it weren’t in New Jersey, it would be her first choice. But as things are--after what happened to her--even CalTech and Stanford seem too far away. “Yeah,” Chelsea mumbles. 

“Look, love.” Her mother shifts on the settee (it’s still kind of strange, that she lives in a place where there are pieces of furniture straight out of a Regency novel) and puts a hand on her shoulder. “You can’t stay in the nest forever. And you can come home whenever you want, as long as you plan your jumps right. Toby says that you’ll be on the strong end when the magic comes back through. And we both know that Berkeley isn’t exactly your style.”

“I’ll think about it,” Chelsea says. 

It scares her.

But she _does_ really want to go.

***

A year and a day from when Toby rescued her, while she and Quentin are playing rummy in an empty ballroom, Chelsea’s magic comes back.

She drops her hand of cards and sits up straight, feeling it fizz up and down her spine, bubble in her bloodstream, warm the tips of her fingers. “Hey,” she says delightedly. The smell of sycamore smoke and calla lilies--wait, no, meadow lilies now--rises. 

“Oh, awesome,” says Quentin. “What are you going to do?”

“Well.” She holds up her hands and watches sparkles dance up and down her fingers. “First, I’m waiting out the rush. Then we're telling everyone. And then we have _science_ to do.” Chelsea grins. “I want to know how far I can go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, after the French revolution some guy did propose that there be a yearly ceremony in which everyone announced their friends, and that people who had no friends to announce be banished from France. He was, by all accounts, totally serious about this.


End file.
